The Piece
by TheKittenLeftForDead
Summary: You can't go forward in time. Hermione knows this, but that does nothing to stop her from trying like she doesn't.


**Summary: **You cannot go forward in time. Hermione knows this, but that does nothing to stop her from trying like she doesn't.

**Disclaimer**: This is not mine, the Harry Potter series belongs to J.K. Rowling.

* * *

><p>She awakes, freezing. Her memory is foggy, and she vaguely wonders why her bed has become hard as stone. When the snow finally seeps into her clothes, she realizes she must get up. Cold and dripping, she glances down at herself and wonders what has happened to her robes.<p>

Now she wears over-sized muggle apparel. In the darkness, she cannot see the unusual smallness of her hands or the flatness of her chest, but as the numbness dissipates she can feel them with horror. Suddenly, her memory rushes back to her, and realizes she has failed. Something has gone terribly, terribly,wrong.

The spell was supposed to have given her a _little_ time, de-aged her a _few_ years, and send her back a _few _years. That would have been enough. Now the question remains, how old is she…or rather, how young? She shivers, realizing she must get out of the cold first. Hermione stumbles over to the closest building, in whose front lawn she has found herself in.

She bangs on the doors, and collapses into the arms of the woman who opens it, not yet knowing it is a 1930s orphanage or whom resides inside.

A year after she has recovered, she receives a letter and is unsurprised. The old school knows a lot more than the people who claim they run it do. She refrains from telling the younger Dumbledore of her predicament, with the future Dark Lord sitting next to her the whole time. All for the best, she supposes.

Months later, the new Ravenclaw wastes no time gathering knowledge and ingredients. Even though all books say it is futile, there must be a way. She must return home.

*****LeftForDead*****

Night after night, she puts the potions together, adds ingredient after ingredient, but gets no results. If only the Room of Requirement could give her exactly what she wants not just what she needs. She wants to go home, if only the room could do that too.

Every time the potion buzzes, bubbles, or growls, she thinks of home and how close she might be, but how far she really was. She sneaks into the library, with the invisibility cloak Harry left her, sifting through book after book late into the night. And it all seems worth it when one book offers her hope.

She must _give a part of herself_ _to leave_ _in the past  
><em>

It is vague, but it is something.

That same night, she is found. Too tired to make up a story, too tired of making up stories, she simply doesn't respond to his questioning look. She knows it will anger him to no end and revels in the thought. He, who has caused her to come here, who had taken her from her past, her future, her….she sighs.

As the months pass by, she finds herself getting more and more confused about When she really is.

.*****LeftForDead*****

Hermione wonders if Dumbledore knows what she is up to. The old man has watched her age from 11, the age that that god forsaken spell bounced her back to. Surely she hasn't been more clever than he. He MUST know she is not simply an abnormally anti-social second year. What hope did she really have of ever moving forward, going back, if Dumbledore himself didn't know what was really going on?

When she really thinks about it, her reasoning doesn't make much sense. Still, she finds herself simply shaking at the thought of a Dumbledore who might not know how she is to return.

Sometimes, Hermione wants to be twenty again. Late nights, cramped up in the orphanage, she years to be twenty. And she knows for this, time will move forward. She knows, one day she will be twenty again, and if she doesn't find a solution, she will celebrate her 2nd twentieth birthday stuck in the past.

It will be like an old muggle movie, except in color. And sometimes, she'll wish that it will be in black and white, then at least she could pretend it isn't real. But these times are far and few in between. For the time being, she has years before she reaches that dreaded age.

*****LeftForDead*****

It is on the train that he finally approaches her. She's known that this was coming for a while and is not surprised when he comes to her compartment. His green Slytherin Robes have still not been changed for simple muggle clothes. She knows he does that as last minute as possible. They do end up in the same place after all.

He is too smart to demand an answer from her straight away. Instead, he tries using charm, and when that does not work, he turns to asking directly. Still, he gets no answer from her. Frustrated, he demands an answer and it is only then when she decides to end his misery.

She refuses to deal with Voldemort acting nice.

He has been suspicious, she knows, since she mysteriously appeared at the orphanage, and finding her wandering around at night has not helped to end such suspicions. His question, expectently is: What has she been doing in the Room of Requirement?

And the answer she gives is honest enough: Experimenting.

Swallowing just a bit of pride for the promise of knowledge, he asks if he can help. Swallowing just a bit of fear, but realizing she has nothing to lose, and therefore nothing to fear, she says yes.

*****LeftForDead*****

So she allows him to help her. He steals ingredients when she asks him to and leaves food outside the Room when she doesn't. He offers no words of comfort when she fails, but he has never wanted her to succeed. If she succeeds, he may not be able to learn from her anymore. He is selfish, and she knows this, but that does not stop her from excepting the wake-up potions he leaves for her each morning.

He uses the long nights to pick her brain and suck everything out. The irony of his future self being the cause for her being here in the first place is not lost on her. Nor is the sheer lack of respect she would have for the space time continuum if she killed him. So, Hermione tells him some things, knowing it will be an initiative for him to continue helping her, hoping to pick her brain.

He is a dark person, a terrible person, even at thirteen, but a person who yearns for the same knowledge she does. He seems young now, maybe still a little innocent, with a bit of baby fat, but he is no child. In that too, they are alike, two adults in a school full of children, trying desperately to grow up.

*****LeftForDead*****

She begins to resent how much help he really is to her and how much she has come to truly rely on him. So, it is towards the end of her 2nd fourth year that she decides to approach Dumbledore and ask for help. Thinking of all the damage she has already done to the timeline, telling Dumbledore seems like nothing.

He listens with that ever-all knowing headmaster air about him, though he is not headmaster now. Hermione has not quite learned to trust so easily, not after all it has cost her in her….past, future, whatever. So she leaves out a fair bit of detail, such as the line from the obscure book she had found back in second year. _A piece of herself_. She'd put blood and hair and things she has owned into various concoctions, but nothing had come of it.

Dumbledore is also smart though, and does not ask for any more information.

"So you see sir, I need to get back to my own time, and save them." she finishes "I was foolish to want an advantage. I'd be happy just to be on the run again, fighting the old fashion way." _With my memories, and friends_, she adds silently

"And what is the problem?" Dumbledore asks carefully, but there seems to be more to his words than he lets on.

"The problem is I can't move forward in time"

"Not as fast as you'd like to Miss Granger."Hermione looks at him for a long moment "Not at all sir, not really"

Because, ultimately, she is stuck in the past. There is no moving forward.

*****LeftForDead*****

For the moment, Dumbledore can do nothing more than give her empty words, comforting though they may be. And for the moment, she immerses herselfin her failures. Dumbledore claims that he will do all that he can, but she'd put all of her years of being on the run to shame if she put too much hope in those empty words.

She still uses his help of course, that wealth of knowledge is too tempting to pass up. And where Dumbledore has the ability to tell her what she wants to hear, Tom has the ability to acquire whatever she needs. As much as she may resent her reliance on him at times, she cannot deny his usefulness or his reasonable company.

Still, Hermione sometimes hates him with every fiber of her being for doing this to her, for being the cause of that failed spell. But when she begins to forget details of her other life, and tries to remember, he keeps her sane. There are times when she believes he is the reason she has yet to go completely insane or holing herself up in the Room of Requirement and never coming out.

He waits for her, eagerly, wanting to learn something new. No, eager isn't quite the right word. Voldemort has always yearned for more knowledge and power. These sessions with her are simply ways to feed his hunger for them. He is a boy, but he is still Voldemort.

*****LeftForDead*****

As the months continue to pass, and Dumbledore has no solutions, she finds her hate for him gradually dissipating, with the rest of her memories….

_A Part of myself…._

She has been dreaming about Ron and Harry for a few years now. On the eve of her 2nd fifth year at Hogwarts, she sits alone in the orphanage and wonders if she will dream of them tonight. Part of her yearns for it, but at the same time, she dreads the dreams. They're a mixed blessing, often glimpsesof things she's forgotten, but remind her of all of the memories she has lost.

Sometimes, Ron and Harry are concerned, looking at her as if she is sick. Vaguely, she wonders if maybe they're out there somewhere, and are trying to help her. Perhaps they are stuck as well. This is a calming thought, that she is not alone. Then she remembers that they are dead, and puts the thought aside.

Tom's footsteps creak outside her door, ready for their private lessons. No Vol- but the name is out of her mind for the moment. The time is coming, she can tell, that He will ask how she knows what she knows. His attempts to pick her brain have mostly failed so far, but curiosity is Tom's weakness.

*****LeftForDead*****

They do not go around acknowledging each other. As far as anyone knows, they do not know one another. It is not so much that they do this on purpose or even have talked about it, and Hermione is not so sure who began it. They simply so not acknowledge one another.

In class, he is cold and indifferent towards her as everyone else. When her memories slip away from her, Hermione will amuse and distract herself by imagining Tom being replaced by someone far more human than he appears to others, because that is what he seems like at night. The boy has become such an expert at disguise that Hermione wonders who he really is.

A few nightmares later, and she does not care to know.

*****LeftForDead*****

"Destroy the Horcruxes?" Hermione asks, blandly. Oh, the thought has gone through her head for sure. Killing Tom too, but the farther her memories drift from her, the less she can bring herself to do the deed.

But Dumbledore does not know this, he doesn't know _anything_. He can't understand. He stands there, stroking his beard, and it is clear from the bags beneath his eyes that this has been bothering him all the time since she's told him.

"Miss Granger, you cannot return to your time. This is what _must_ happen if you wish to save your world….and your friends." Those are the words that awaken Hermione from her apathetic state. Vague recollections of nightmares surface before her eyes. Bodies, everywhere….high, cold laughter….

Hermione blinks, Dumbledore does not _understand_. Even if she remembered where to find the Horcruxes….he'd just make more. It would be pointless. No, she _must_ return to her own time and…..and what? Is it just a selfish homesickness that drives her? What is there for her? Perhaps Dumbledore is right…she should change things and make the future better.

Something inside of Hermione begins to scream. _That is not what I am here to do_ it says

"I cannot."

Dumbledore's face draws into that of the old man he is soon becoming. "Perhaps it is for the best that I…that I kill him then." Hermione reacts fast, with the instinct living on the run had instilled in her "Expelliarmus!" Dumbledore is caught off guard. "Obliviate!"

She leaves his office, hoping it is for the best, and wonders upon those words once more.

_A piece of me…what is there left?_

*****LeftForDead*****_  
><em>

In the middle of her 2nd fifth year, Tom finally asks the purpose of her _experiments_ more directly and invasively than ever before. Surely, he has searched every book in the library for a clue, and maybe he'd even stumbled upon the same one she had years before, the only one that gave any real light to whatshe has been attempting.

But no book could have given him the knowledge that war had given her. She had stopped relying on books long ago as her main source of information, just as she'd stopped relying on Dumbledore's judgement. Just as she'd once stopped relying on Harry to defeat that dark wizard, she can not even name now. Just as she'd stopped relying on that same wizard to kill her and end her in between world. So Tom asking her, is no surprise.

She tells him an answer that is true enough, but angers him to no end "To go back."

"Back to where?"

"Home."

She ignores the questions that follow, wondering if she could even answer them at this point. When she comes back to her dorm late that night, her eyes, trained from years of hiding, see something off about her bed. Yes, that's it, the trunk is too far out. Tom had been here and maybe he wants her to know it too. Hermione sighs, it is the first time she is glad not to have a pensive.

*****LeftForDead*****

Still, there are times when Hermione wishes for a pensive. The thought of being able to relive memories is a luxury, a dream, and something she years forthe day she forgets her parents' names. _Funny_, she thinks. _I forget the name of the man who took them away from me, and everything I hold dear, but it isnot until now that forget them_

For truly, she has forgotten them. They are but the people who birthed her now, for all she can remember of them. If she had known what was going to happen when she said that spell, then maybe she could have hid her memories away. But the spell that had been meant to buy her time, to make herfifteen or fourteen or…who remembered…..it had failed.

No, it had worked only _too_ well. And she had not thought of the consequences until it was too late, until she had stood in front of that orphanage, and too many memories had gone.

From the little knowledge he can gain from books and his own observations, Tom slowly begins to figure it out. Her sudden appearance, her desperate experimenting, the ingredients she uses in the potion. "You're a time traveler, aren't you." He asks one late night, sitting cross legged as he watches herslice the gilliweed.

She considers lying to him, but just as the first night she ran into him, she is tired of stories and answers him honestly, as always. "In a way, how did you know?"

He tells her of his search through books and her things. "Your muggle clothes were there, but ones like I've never seen." Yet he is too smart to ask more and waits for her to speak. "I should burn them" is all she says.

_What would Harry and Ron say right now? _She wonders, but hopes that if she waits longenough, her memories won't give her the option to say more.

*****LeftForDead*****

One morning, before finals, she sits up…..and immediately falls back into bed. Gritting her teeth, she remembers today she had been meant to meet Tom early. They were planning to venture into the Forbidden Forest and collect some pixie wood she was hoping might make some difference.

She had stumbled across an old witch's memories, hidden in the library, and had snuck into the Headmaster's office to use the memories. The old witch had heard of someone traveling forward with the use of pixie wood.

She has really been wanting to test this theory. It appears, however, that she had fallen ill.

Some time passes before an all too familiar head is seen through the doorway."Tom, what are you doing in the girl's dorm? A Ravenclaw's dorm, no less?"

With that ever present smirk, he answers "You were not at breakfast. I had thought you wanted to go venturing for pixie wood? Don't you need big ol' me to protect you?"

She glares at him, and ignores the comment."They really should be making those riddles tougher if a mere _Slytherin_ can answer it"

"Pfft, I tortured it out of some first year."He grins, but Hermione does not grin back "Don't joke like that." Tom drops his smirk

"You don't seem well."

Indeed, Hermione begins to feel stifled in the Dorm, and realizes she must be running a fever. The room begins to spin.

"Should I get the nurse?" Tom asks, just as Hermione loses consciousness.

*****LeftForDead*****

"You dear, need your rest." the nurse chides Hermione as she sips the healing potion. "Your body has no affliction, no poison, no disease, but it is fighting back" she continues.

"At what?" Asks Hermione, though she knows the answer. Exhaustion is something she is used to.

"At you of course. It is as if you haven't rested in months."

_Try ten years_ Hermione says silently.

"Your body can't take the abuse, so it is resting for you." Concludes the nurse.

Hermione thinks back to…well, she cannot really say. It is a time before all of this has happened. Before nightmares. She had rested then.

She leans back, closes her eyes and wishes she can go back there.

It takes her a while to remember she is trying to do just that.

*****LeftForDead*****

Hermione finds him waiting for her, outside the sick ward. "We've wasted three days" is all she says. He only nods and doesn't say anything when she leans on him for support.

_The past has taken my strength, what else do I have to give before it will free me? _She thinks tiredly.

*****LeftForDead*****

After finals, Hermione knows she was not sent to destroy Tom, that her being here is just an accident. That much, she still remembers, even if all of Tom's horrors are lost on her. But as she watches him stir the cauldron, she wonders how many lives she might save by killing him right now. It is a cold thought, but Hermione does not shiver at it as she might have years ago. Years and years ago.

She obliviated Dumbledore for even mentioning the idea, but she had not been as lost then. _I've been here for five years_ she thinks. A fading conversation with Harry or…Ron was it…. Had that been his name….comes to mind.

_"We're running out of time, he's too strong now""So let's make more then" _This is her, she thinks

_"More what?""Time of course! We're running out of it, so let's just…."_

_"This isn't like eggs Hermione, you can't just buy it at the market. It's time!"_

_"Well bloody hell, I know that. I didn't say buy, I said make. Time can be made with the right spell."_

_"What will we do? Kill him in his cradle?"_

_"Hardly….no spell could allow for so many years. But maybe just a little…just enough…""Just enough then Hermione."_

She can feel the memory slipping away, even now. Her mind can't hold onto it for much longer. She looks back at Tom. Had she been meant to kill him in his cradle? Is that what she had gone back for?Well then it _had_ been a complete failure indeed.

*****LeftForDead*****

At the beginning of their sixth year, while they sit in the train compartment, Tom brings up a point she has been waiting to hear.

"You can't move forward in time."

Hermione does not smirk or laugh or deny, she simply nods her head "Yes, I suppose that is true." She has supposed it for a while. There is a flick of anger in Tom's eyes. "Then why are you trying! Why waste so much of your life on this….this wild goose chase? Why not be content, and let time move its natural course?"

His pale skin is flushed, his calm expression gone. Somewhere, she knows there is an answer to his question, but buried in her faded memories. She must return to someone, to save them.

"All the research" he continues "All you've taught me has been for nothing! Wizards have wasted away trying to get back to their own time."

"I suppose I must waste away then." Hermione responds, turning her sight back to the fields in the window. _And give what little I have left._

They don't speak again for some time.

*****LeftForDead*****

Tom had been right of course, Hermione knows that. She will die here. What is so terrible about that, she cannot entirely recall. Maybe she won't have to live to see the horrors that await the future.

Tom had recently left the train compartment to change. Hermione shoves his trunk off the seat and a paper slips out from beneath it. There are names there, crossed out and rewritten. Combinations of….Tom Marvolo Riddle.

At the very bottom is a name that Hermione had long forgotten. Voldemort.

When Tom comes back to the compartment, Hermione is shaking with anger….and fear. She cannot remember that last time she has been so afraid. Her body simply recoils at the name, and bile rises in her throat. It is one thing to know the horrors will happen, it is quite another to be reminded of the person who commits them.

"Voldemort." She says to Tom, forcing herself not to stutter. His eyes widen. "How did you…." She hands him the piece of paper. "It's just a nickname, something I might tell my friends to call me."

"What friends!" Hermione spits out "I'm the closest thing you have to that, and I refuse to call you by this. No, you want your ….followers to address you as such!"

Memories rush over her. A skull in the sky, on a forearm, green tinted spells fly every which way….death so much death. She does not give Tom a moment to respond.

"Understand this, Mr. Riddle. If you….if you continue to go by this name or any other which is not yours, I will refuse to teach you any longer."With those words, she storms out of the compartment, leaving a very thoughtful Tom Riddle behind. And with those words, she does exactly what she had not intended to do, what she had thought once impossible to do, she changes the future just enough to make a difference.

For better or worse, is unclear.

*****LeftForDead*****

Just when Hermione is ready to leave the Room of Requirement one night, or maybe forever, she realizes how sick she's grown of this room. The drapery, the books read and re-read, the never ending projects that have never gotten her anywhere. All of it, she is sick and tired. Tom sits, watching her, abandoning his cutting of mandrake roots.

"We've tried everything!" Hermione yells "Mandrake root, pixie wood, griffin claw, Fire, stone, my hair, my blood, everything!" The thought grabs a hold of her heart.

"Your hair and blood….?" Tom asks.

"A piece of me, the book said it needs a piece of me. The past." She is hardly making sense now. Tom is silent. She hates the silence. Hermione picks up a beaker from her work table and throws it to the ground. The sound is deafening, and glass pieces lay everywhere. Hermione picks up a handful, cutting herself purposely.

It has been so long since she has felt much of anything. The fear in the compartment had been almost addicting. Angrily, she throws the blood covered glass into the cauldron, watching with pleasure as it bubbles in protest.

"Stop." Says Tom, as calm as ever "The past, _your_ past does not want your blood or your anger for that matter."Hermione turns to him, eyes slit.

"Oh and how would _you_ know."

"Because I read that book too, that very same line in fact. And I've watched you struggle to answer even the vaguest of questions about the future. You have forgotten, haven't you?"

The question dissolves all of the anger left in Hermione, making her eyes burn with tears she has never let herself cry."Hermione, it wants your memories." This brings a harsh bark of laughter from Hermione. "It has already taken them."

But Tom shakes his head "No, your body has been storing them away for you, deep inside your brain, one by one."

She looks at him incredulously "How do you know that?"

Tom looks ashamed for the first time "I…read your mind while you were in the sick ward. There is a door, it is locked. After everything else I learned, I figured what had happened."

Hermione does not have it left in her to be shocked, or dismayed. He _is_ Voldemort after all."My…nickname, it reminded you, didn't it? So the memories are not gone, they are stored away."Indeed, Hermione realizes she has kept her survival instinct….

"You must unlock that door Hermione, if you wish to go back."

Hermione shakes her head "It asks for a _piece of me_ not ALL of me. That is ALL of me."

"Do you want to return or not?"

" I don't know…I can't remember…"

But she can feel the door now, buried in her subconscious. The key…..the key…it is almost in her hand. She feels it.

"Then remember." says Tom from very far away.

Hermione is not in the Room of Requirement any longer. She stands in front of a door, a very familiar door. The door to her bedroom, in her parents' house.

Hesitantly, she slips the key into the lock, and the door creaks open….

*****LeftForDead*****

Memories flow like a stream at first, but quickly form into rushing rapids. She is caught up in them…..no, she jumps into them.

They welcome her, embracing her in their familiarity once more. She swims through them, laughing and carefree as she has not been in so long.

But gradually, one by one they slip past her until she wonders where she is.

And who she is.

Everything is blurry. Her limbs feel too heavy, and her muscles too weak.

A man, stands above her. He lifts her up, too easily.

Too easily? But what does she know?

Slowly, those thoughts become less coherent.

*****LeftForDead*****

Tom looks down on the infant in his arms. She did not want to kill him in his cradle, and he will abide by that same rule. The past had taken from her, her memories. What he hadn't counted on was her age disappearing as well. But, he supposes, that might be for the best. Let her make new memories, let her forget anything about the future. Let her think she was born in this time.

Because he knows, you can't move forward in time. You can only forget that you have ever tried.


End file.
